[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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Israeli soldiers in Gaza told Haaretz that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month.

Conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat.

One soldier described the situation as a total breakdown of the Israel Defense Forces' ethical codes in Gaza.

Haaretz has learned that the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – a body tasked with reviewing incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war – to investigate suspected war crimes at these sites.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid centers began operating in the Strip at the end of May. The circumstances of the foundation's establishment and its funding are murky: it is known to have been set up by Israel in coordination with U.S. evangelicals and private security contractors. Its current CEO is an evangelical leader close to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The GHF operates four food distribution sites – three in southern Gaza and one in the center – known in the IDF as "rapid distribution centers" (Mahpazim). They are staffed by American and Palestinian workers and secured by the IDF from a distance of several hundred meters.

Thousands, and at times tens of thousands, of Gazans arrive daily to collect food from these sites.

Contrary to the foundation's initial promises, distribution is chaotic, with crowds rushing the piles of boxes. Since the rapid distribution centers opened, Haaretz has counted 19 shooting incidents near them. While the shooters' identities are not always clear, the IDF does not permit armed individuals in these humanitarian zones without its knowledge.

The distribution centers typically open for just one hour each morning. According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centers close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night – ahead of the opening – it's possible that some civilians couldn't see the boundaries of the designated area.

"It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire."

The soldier added, "We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces." According to him, "I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".

IDF officers told Haaretz that the army does not allow the public in Israel or abroad to see footage of what takes place around the food distribution sites. According to them, the army is satisfied that the GHF's operations have prevented a total collapse of international legitimacy for continuing the war. They believe the IDF has managed to turn Gaza into a "backyard," especially since the war with Iran began.

"Gaza doesn't interest anyone anymore," said a reservist who completed another round of duty in the northern Strip this week. "It's become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing. It's not even an 'unfortunate incident,' like they used to say."

An officer serving in the security detail of a distribution center described the IDF's approach as deeply flawed: "Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire – that's highly problematic, to say the least," he told Haaretz. "It's neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells."

The officer explained that the security on the sites is organized into several tiers. Inside the distribution centers and the "corridor" leading to them are American workers, and the IDF is not permitted to operate in that space. A more external layer is made up of Palestinian supervisors, some of them armed and affiliated with the Abu Shabab militia.

The IDF's security perimeter includes tanks, snipers, and mortars whose purpose, according to the officer, is to protect those present and ensure the aid distribution can take place.

"At night, we open fire to signal to the population that this is a combat zone and they mustn't come near," the officer said. "Once," he recounted, "the mortars stopped firing, and we saw people starting to approach. So we resumed fire to make it clear they weren't allowed to. In the end, one of the shells landed on a group of people."

In other cases, he said, "We fired machine guns from tanks and threw grenades. There was one incident where a group of civilians was hit while advancing under the cover of fog. It wasn't intentional, but these things happen."

He noted that there were also casualties and injuries among IDF soldiers in these incidents. "A combat brigade doesn't have the tools to handle a civilian population in a war zone. Firing mortars to keep hungry people away is neither professional nor humane. I know there are Hamas operatives among them, but there are also people who simply want to receive aid. As a country, we have a responsibility to ensure that happens safely," the officer said.

A letter written by Hamas leadership addressed to Hezbollah and IRGC senior leadership, discovered by Israeli intelligence following the assassination of Mohammed Sinwar, revealed that Hamas had believed that October 7 would be the end of the Jewish state.

Written by top Hamas leaders, the document provided insight into the mood leading up to the attack, the relationship between Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, and the strategy Hamas believed would result in Israel's destruction.

This letter, composed by Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif, Yahya Sinwar, and Marwan Issa, was addressed to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Saeed Izadi, commander of the Palestine Corps within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force.

It was found in a bunker used by Sinwar and Hamas’s military leadership, along with a significant amount of similar materials, including correspondence between Hamas officials and foreign entities.

In the document, the Hamas leaders apologized profusely to Nasrallah for not informing him in advance and begged him to join the war effort. They even outline how they envision Hezbollah joining and the continuation of the campaign until Israel is destroyed.

Details of the planned attack on Israel
The letter detailed the planned offensive: "When you read these words of ours, thousands of jihad fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades will go out to attack targets of the criminal Zionist occupation, bomb enemy outposts, population centers, airports, and junctions in the southern region of occupied Palestine. They will breach the separation fence to confront and fight the occupation forces and take over military and civilian positions in the region, capturing large numbers of enemy soldiers."

The letter further accused Israel of intending to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque and build the Temple, citing biblical "red cows" brought into the area as proof.

It then continued with a review of Israel’s broader military actions and policies, including attacks on Syria and Iraq, as well as the assassination of key figures in Iran, citing these as evidence of the ongoing conflict.

Israeli cabinet’s decision on August 22
In the letter, the Hamas leaders outlined the reasons why Israel believed the October 7 attack was inevitable. The letter cited decisions from an Israeli cabinet meeting on August 22, noting that Israel aimed to avoid a regional war by launching separate campaigns against Palestinians, Syrians, Hezbollah, and Iran.

An analysis of Israeli intentions showed Israel's plan to strategically withdraw and fight separately to prevent uniting other regional forces against it. The concern over Israeli actions in Gaza is specifically mentioned as a cause for Hamas's counterattack.

Hamas leaders urged Nasrallah to act
The leaders then urged Nasrallah to take action, emphasizing the moral duty to defend Al-Aqsa and highlighting the urgency of the situation: "Today, Al-Aqsa and its defenders are calling on you, and so are the martyrs in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon."
The letter ended with a stern warning that hesitation could lead to severe consequences, stressing that failing to act would cause the collapse of the "axis of resistance."

"This campaign will change the rules of the game,” they declared, outlining a vision for the downfall of Israel and the establishment of a new political order in the region.

US President Donald Trump is working to advance a hostage deal aimed at securing the release of all Israeli hostages and bringing an end to the Israel-Hamas War, sources familiar with the negotiation process told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

“We’re optimistic a deal can be reached,” a US official said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a meeting with a small group of ministers and senior defense officials at the IDF Southern Command’s headquarters on Sunday to discuss the continuation of the war in Gaza.

One of the key topics of the meeting was whether Israel should send a delegation to the talks, which are expected to be held either in Egypt or Qatar.

Approximately 75% of the issues have already been resolved in recent weeks, a source told the Post. “The remaining 25% includes key matters such as the humanitarian situation, the conclusion of the war itself, and the guarantees Israel is demanding to prevent Hamas from rearming.”

Will Hamas leaders be exiled?
One option back on the table is the exile of Hamas leaders, as previously reported by the Post.

While Hamas had previously dismissed the idea of exile as part of a deal, the option has resurfaced in the negotiations.

Three Palestinians were shot dead and seven more were injured on Wednesday during a settler rampage in the West Bank village of Kafr Malik near Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority health ministry reported.

Over 100 settlers took part in the attack, according to the Yesh Din rights group, which said the violence unfolded in the presence of Israeli soldiers.

Footage from Kafr Malik showed several homes and cars torched in the attack. Settlers also hurled stones at residents and property during the attack, according to witnesses who spoke to Palestinian media.

Another clip showed Israeli soldiers firing at Palestinians near the entrance to Kafr Malik.

The Israel Defense Forces later confirmed troops opened fire, saying the soldiers were shooting back at Palestinian gunmen and rioters hurling stones. According to the military, dozens of Israelis entered Kafr Malik during the settler rampage, setting fire to buildings and cars.

During attempts to disperse the violence, an IDF officer was lightly injured after being hit by a stone. The military did not say which side threw the stone.

Shortly after, the IDF said Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the forces from within the village, and others hurled stones at the troops.

The soldiers returned fire “at the source of the gunfire and the stone throwers,” the IDF said, adding that “hits were identified, and it has emerged there are several injured and dead.”

Meanwhile, five Israelis suspected of participating in the attack on the village were detained and handed over to police for further questioning, the military added.

“Under the auspices of government and military backing, settler violence in the West Bank continues and becomes more deadly by the day. This is what ethnic cleansing looks like,” Yesh Din charged in a statement.

Hussein al-Sheikh, the deputy to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, also condemned the Israeli government.

“The government of Israel, with its behavior and decisions, is pushing the region to explode,” he posted on X. “We call on the international community to intervene urgently to protect our Palestinian people.”

Earlier Wednesday, masked Israeli settlers were filmed torching a vehicle during a raid on a Bedouin Palestinian hamlet of A-Tayyibe near Ramallah. The PA’s official Wafa news agency reported that settlers also hurled stones at Palestinians in the northern West Bank village of Asira al-Qibliya, striking one of the men in the head.

A group of several dozen Israelis attacked IDF reserve soldiers while rampaging in the West Bank between late Friday and early Saturday morning, in the latest act of settler violence.

The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday that the attackers also attempted to ram the soldiers with a car.

The reservists and police were dispatched to Kafr Malik near Ramallah on Friday evening due to fresh rioting there. The area was declared a closed military zone due to a deadly settler attack there on Wednesday.

When the troops arrived on the scene they were attacked by the settlers, the military said.

According to Hebrew media reports, the Israeli assailants beat, choked and hurled rocks at the troops.

The settlers also slashed the tires of a police cruiser, the Kan public broadcaster said.

The troops used “riot dispersal means” to clear the gathering, and six suspects were detained and handed over to the police.

Security sources quoted by the Ynet news site said the settlers likely came from a newly established illegal outpost in the area.

Hours earlier, Palestinian news sites published footage showing what they said were armed settlers expelling Palestinian farmers from their fields belonging to the village of Shuqba, also near Ramallah.

The latest violence came after a deadly settler rampage in Kafr Malik on Wednesday for which five suspects were detained, before being released the next day without charge.

Saudi Arabia on Friday condemned the recent spate of settler attacks, including in Kafr Malik on Wednesday. A statement from the Saudi foreign ministry said the attacks were taking place “under the protection of the occupation forces.”

“The Kingdom reiterates its condemnation of the continued Israeli violence against unarmed civilians in Gaza, including the targeting of civilian sites housing displaced persons,” the statement added.

The Kafr Malik rampage was also denounced by the United Arab Emirates, whose foreign minister “warned against the continuous assaults by settlers, and called on the Israeli government to assume full responsibility, condemn these hostile practices and hold the perpetrators accountable.

“The UAE stressed that failure to act will be seen as tacit approval that will only further deepen the cycle of hatred, racism and instability,” the statement added.

Settler attacks on Palestinians throughout the West Bank have been taking place on a near-daily basis with almost complete impunity, in what has sparked mounting sanctions from Western governments.

The head of the Israel Police’s West Bank division is currently under investigation for ignoring settler violence to curry favor in the eyes of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. He was allowed to return to his post, despite the ongoing investigation.

Security services evacuated and demolished five illegal settlement outposts on Monday, including the Har Hatzor outpost which was the scene of severe settler violence against IDF personnel on Friday night, settler activists reported.

The enforcement activity comes against the background of the Har Hatzor incident, as well as a violent protest by radical settler activists at the Binyamin Regional Brigade military base in the West Bank, and an arson attack at an IDF security installation in the territory.

Settler leaders condemned the latest settler violence, with the head of the Yesha Council umbrella group calling on the police to find and charge those responsible for the arson attack as quickly as possible.

And in a visit to the IDF’s West Bank division on Monday, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir called the violence “unacceptable,” after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior politicians also condemned the attacks.

“The mission is clear — to maintain security, protect civilians, and strengthen settlement defense, while not accepting the unacceptable behavior of extremist and violent groups,” Zamir was quoted as saying regarding the growing phenomenon of settler violence.

“We must not allow the development of phenomena that could spiral into anarchy and the breakdown of governance,” Zamir said. “Disaster is at our doorstep — and alongside the security agencies, a swift, systemic response is urgently needed.

According to settler activists, five illegal outposts, unauthorized settlements which the government has not approved, were demolished during the course of Monday.

Following the arson attack on the security installation and the riot at the IDF base, Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council which represents settlement municipal authorities in the West Bank, spoke with the head of the regional police commander and “demanded” that the police act swiftly to catch and charge anyone who did damage to IDF property.

“They need to sit in prison. I expect that all the resources at the police’s disposal will be dedicated to this,” said Ganz.

The Yesha Council itself put out a statement saying the organization “fiercely condemns all aggressive actions against IDF soldiers,” adding that “any attack or harm [to them] does severe harm to the values of Judaism and the settlements.”

The council added that “a small group of criminals must not stain the entire settlement project, the settlers, and the wonderful youth who work for the settlements all around the country.”

Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also condemned the attacks, and Defense Minister Israel Katz said he would hold an “urgent meeting” about the attacks, which followed a settler rampage in a Palestinian village last week.

“No civilized country can tolerate violent and anarchic acts such as the burning of a military installation, damage to IDF property, and assaults on security personnel by citizens of the state,” Netanyahu wrote in a statement, calling on law enforcement to investigate the incident and prosecute the “rioters.”

Netanyahu defended the wider settler population, depicting those who partook in the attacks as a fringe minority.

“The settler community is a model and an example of developing the land, meaningful service in the IDF, and contributing to the cultivation of Torah scholars. We will not allow a violent and fanatic few to tarnish an entire community,” he wrote.

Palestinian authorities discovered narcotic pills hidden inside flour bags sent to the Israeli-besieged enclave as part of U.S. aid.

In a statement, Gaza’s government media office said prescription painkiller Oxycodone was found by Palestinians inside flour bags they received from U.S.-run aid distribution points in Gaza.

"It is possible that these pills were deliberately ground or dissolved inside the flour itself, which constitutes a direct assault on public health,” it warned.

The media office held Israel fully responsible for this "heinous crime" aimed at spreading addiction and destroying the Palestinian social fabric from within.

"This is a part of the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinians,” it said, calling Israel’s use of drugs a "soft weapon in a dirty war against civilians.”

Israel has crafted a plan to establish four aid distribution points in southern and central Gaza, which Israeli media say aims to evacuate Palestinians from northern Gaza into the south.

The Israeli mechanism was opposed by the international community and the U.N., which came as an alternative attempt by Israel to bypass the aid distribution through U.N. channels.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 549 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded by Israeli fire near aid centers and UN food truck locations since May 27.

Rejecting international calls for a cease-fire, the Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing over 56,300 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

The Israel and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been accused of distributing flour laced with opioid drugs - the latest scandal to have dogged the controversial US and Israel-backed food distribution group.

This follows the ongoing killings of Palestinians at the aid sites while seeking desperately-needed supplies.

The New Arab takes a look at the latest controversy surrounding the GHF.

Drug-laced aid

Gaza's government media office on Friday said that Oxycodone pills were mixed into bags of flour, with some pills being found inside packages of aid meant for distribution to Palestinians.

“We hold the Israeli occupation fully responsible for this crime, which aims to spread addiction and destroy Palestinian society from within,” the office said in a statement.

Gaza's anti-drug committee warned Palestinians to beware of the "death traps called US-Israeli aid centers" and urged citizens to report foreign substances discovered in aid packages.

Palestinians in Gaza have shared photographs to social media purportedly showing pills discovered inside sacks of aid.

What is Oxycodone?

Oxycodone is an opioid drug comparable to morphine, which is used for the relief of severe pain. The drug is usually prescribed for post-operative pain, accident victims or cancer patients.

Gaza-based pharmacist Omar Hamad said on X that he and others in his profession had seen Oxycodone pills in four sacks distributed in Gaza.

Writing on X, Hamad said that the drug "acts on specific receptors in the nervous system, causing severe addiction, a decrease in heart rate, impaired awareness and consciousness, and dangerous respiratory depression. Its side effects are numerous and can transform a person into something unrecognizable—a shell of who they were".

Aid as a weapon

Israel has long been accused of using food as a weapon of war against the Palestinians, with the UN this week condemning Tel Aviv's "weaponization of food", amid further killings of Palestinians at aid sites.

Prior to the establishment of the Israel-backed GHF distributions centres in Gaza in late May, Israel had blocked all aid into the enclave, using the resumption of humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Hamas.

More than 580 Palestinians have been killed over the past few weeks in the vicinity the food distribution sites, with Israeli soldiers admitting to Haaretz this week that they were ordered to deliberately fire at crowds seeking aid.

Israel has also admitted to using aid trucks to smuggle soldiers into residential areas, including in the June 2024 Nuseirat massacre, in which more than 200 Palestinians were killed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also admitted to funding and arming criminal gangs in Gaza - gangs accused by Hamas of stealing aid and attacking aid trucks.

Netanyahu, along with former defence minister Yoav Gallant, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for using starvation as a weapon of war, among other charges.

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he will be “very firm” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the need to end the war in Gaza when the premier visits Washington next week.

Speaking to reporters, Trump also said that Netanyahu “wants it too,” referring to a hostage-ceasefire deal that would bring an end to the Gaza war.

Earlier Tuesday, the president repeated his prediction that a ceasefire and hostage release deal would be reached shortly. “I think we’ll have a deal next week,” he said.

He also said he and Netanyahu will discuss Gaza and “the great success we had with Iran,” adding: “We want to get the hostages back.”

The US president’s comments followed Netanyahu’s announcement on Monday that he will visit Washington, DC next week to meet with Trump.

The prime minister is set to take off for the US capital on Saturday and meet with Trump on Monday, July 7. On Tuesday, leading up to that trip, discussions took place in the Prime Minister’s Office over attempts to reach a hostage release deal with Hamas, with reports of some progress.

“There is a positive dynamic and lively activity on the issue of negotiations,” a senior official told The Times of Israel.

After Trump asserted to reporters that Netanyahu also wanted to see a ceasefire and hostage release deal come to fruition, Israeli cabinet members told Channel 12 on Tuesday evening that, for the first time, the premier was showing signs that he would prefer a deal to end the war in Gaza soon.

The report suggested that indirect talks with Hamas could restart in the coming days, while Netanyahu is in the US.

There is real, tangible US pressure on Qatar, and Qatari pressure on Hamas, Israeli officials told Channel 12. “We are more optimistic. There are solutions being put together, and more positive approach to moving forward,” said an official.

According to the outlet, Israel is showing more flexibility about the wording on the end of the war than it had previously done.

The report came after a cabinet meeting on the Gaza war earlier on Tuesday, during which IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir was said to have engaged in a spirited debate with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir over the future of the campaign.

Zamir told the two ultranationalist ministers that “Hamas is dead,” with the proof being that it fired only one rocket during the recent 12-day war with Iran, the report said, adding that the two ministers had, in turn, pushed for a more aggressive implementation of Trump’s relocation plan for Gazans.

He was also said to have dismissed their hopes for conquering the entire Gaza Strip, telling them it would endanger the lives of the hostages and would lead to possible violations of international law.

During the debate, according to the outlet, Netanyahu insisted that the war would not end before Hamas is defeated. However, it added, the premier could define a defeat of Hamas in a way that allows him to end the war in the coming weeks.

Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting on Monday that he will also meet with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and senior lawmakers.

Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who is currently in Washington ahead of Netanyahu’s visit, was slated to meet with Witkoff, Rubio and Vance.

Hostage-ceasefire talks are being mediated by Witkoff, whose latest proposal, the authenticity of which was confirmed to The Times of Israel by two sources familiar with the negotiations, would see Hamas release 10 living Israeli hostages held in Gaza and return the bodies of 18 deceased hostages during a 60-day ceasefire. The rest of the hostages would be released if a permanent ceasefire is reached.

Hamas sources told the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the group’s response to Witkoff’s deal proposal was generally positive, though with conditions.

A source directly involved in the negotiations told The Times of Israel that Hamas’s response included a demand that makes it more difficult for Israel to resume fighting if talks on a permanent ceasefire are not completed by the end of the 60-day truce.

The source said there were other changes the terror group wanted to make to the Witkoff proposal, adding that it would require a more drawn-out negotiation process.

The updated proposal submitted by Hamas envisions the release of the 10 hostages being more spread out throughout the truce, rather than in two batches on the first and seventh days, as the US offer envisioned.

The source said this change was aimed at preventing Netanyahu from abandoning talks on a permanent ceasefire after the hostages are released, or refusing to engage in them altogether, as he did during the previous ceasefire in January.

Following an emergency meeting with top security officials, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Tuesday a series of measures he said were aimed at curbing settler violence against Israeli troops and security forces in the West Bank.

“We will not allow or accept such serious incidents in any form,” Katz said at the Monday night meeting, according to a Defense Ministry statement, vowing significant police enforcement and the creation of a joint task force led by the police in coordination with the IDF and Shin Bet to address the phenomenon.

Katz also approved tens of millions of shekels for social programs aimed at integrating extremist settler youth into normative educational frameworks and said a follow-up meeting would be held in three weeks to assess progress.

The defense minister’s statement made no mention of settler violence against Palestinians, who have borne the brunt of the attacks that have taken place on a near-daily basis with near-complete impunity.

Attacks on Palestinians haven’t sparked any condemnations from the government, but a recent riot outside an army base and arson attack targeting a nearby security installation have.

Opposition chiefs said the attackers were “Jewish terrorists” who felt they could act with impunity due to tacit support from members of the government.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said that “terrorists are terrorists.”

“These are Jewish terrorists, a gang of criminals, who feel they have the support of the coalition. Anyone who uses force against IDF soldiers should be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law,” Lapid told Army Radio on Monday.

The new steps came after dozens of Jewish extremists set fire to a security installation and rioted outside a West Bank base overnight Sunday-Monday, days after the local battalion commander was assaulted by settlers.

Members of the crowd held up a sign declaring “The battalion commander is a traitor.”

A military official said some of the settlers tried to break into the Binyamin Regional Brigade military base in the central West Bank, threw rocks and sprayed mace at troops, and slashed the tires of army vehicles.

Additionally, settlers torched a multi-million-shekel security installation used to “thwart terror attacks and maintain security” in the Ramallah area, according to the IDF.

Security services evacuated and demolished five illegal settlement outposts on Monday, including the Har Hatzor outpost, which was the scene of severe settler violence against IDF personnel on Friday night.

In that incident, throngs of rioting settlers attacked soldiers, including a high-ranking officer, at the Palestinian village of Kafr Malik near Ramallah, after the forces arrived there to prevent them from rampaging in the village. Six Israelis were arrested following the violence.

Then on Saturday, a police outpost was vandalized by settlers in what authorities said was an apparent act of revenge for the arrest of the six suspects accused in the nighttime attack. The assailants tried to torch the police post in the West Bank settlement of Beit El, causing damage to the door, and spray-painted “Fire of revenge” on it, according to police.

Settler attacks on Palestinians throughout the West Bank take place on a near-daily basis with impunity, with suspects rarely detained and prosecution even more uncommon. The situation has sparked rising international criticism and mounting sanctions from Western governments.

Last year, Katz ended the policy of administrative detentions — holding a person practically indefinitely without charge — for extremist settlers, while leaving it in place for Palestinians. The tool is typically used when authorities believe they have intelligence tying a suspect to a crime but do not have enough evidence for charges to hold up in a court of law.

The head of the Israel Police’s West Bank division is under investigation for ignoring settler violence, allegedly in order to curry favor in the eyes of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. He was allowed to return to his post, despite the ongoing investigation.

Hopes for an end to the bloody fighting in Gaza appeared to brighten Friday when Hamas announced that it had given a thumbs-up to the latest ceasefire proposal, but added that further talks were needed.

“Hamas has completed its internal consultations with Palestinian factions and forces regarding the mediators’ latest proposal to halt the aggression against our people in Gaza,” the Palestinian militant group said in a statement.

“The movement has submitted a positive response to the mediators,” the statement added. “The movement is fully prepared to immediately enter into a round of negotiations on the mechanism for implementing this framework.”

The development came just days after President Donald Trump said Israel has “agreed to the necessary conditions” to finalize a 60-day ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas war.

But in his first remarks since Trump’s announcement on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not confirm Trump’s claim and once again called for the elimination of Hamas.

“There will be no Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “There will be no Hamastan. We are not going back to that. It is over. We will release all our hostages.”

Netanyahu is scheduled to visit to the White House on Monday, where he is expected to discuss the situation in Gaza with Trump.

An Israeli reservist who served three tours of duty in Gaza has told Sky News in a rare on-camera interview that his unit was often ordered to shoot anyone entering areas soldiers defined as no-go zones, regardless of whether they posed a threat, a practice he says left civilians dead where they fell.

"We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die," he said. "If they're inside, they're dangerous you need to kill them. No matter who it is," he said.

Speaking anonymously, the soldier said troops killed civilians arbitrarily. The soldier said the criteria of opening fire on civilians shifted depending on the commander.

The soldier is a reservist in the Israel Defence Force's 252nd Division. He was posted twice to the Netzarim corridor; a narrow strip of land cut through central Gaza early in the war, running from the sea to the Israeli border. It was designed to split the territory and allow Israeli forces to have greater control from inside the Strip.

He said that when his unit was stationed on the edge of a civilian area, soldiers slept in a house belonging to displaced Palestinians and marked an invisible boundary around it that defined a no-go zone for Gazans.


"In one of the houses that we had been in, we had the big territory. This was the closest to the citizens' neighbourhood, with people inside. And there's an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know it, and that they know they are not allowed to pass it," he said. "But how can they know?"

People who crossed into this area were most often shot, he said.

"It was like pretty much everyone that comes into the territory, and it might be like a teenager riding his bicycle," he said.

The soldier described a prevailing belief among troops that all Gazans were terrorists, even when they were clearly unarmed civilians. This perception, he said, was not challenged and was often endorsed by commanders.

"They don't really talk to you about civilians that may come to your place. Like I was in the Netzarim road, and they say if someone comes here, it means that he knows he shouldn't be there, and if he still comes, it means he's a terrorist," he said.

"This is what they tell you. But I don't really think it's true. It's just poor people, civilians that don't really have too many choices."

He said the criteria of opening fire on civilians shifted depending on the commander.

"They might be shot, they might be captured," he said. "It really depends on the day, the mood of the commander."

He recalled an occasion of a man crossing the boundary and being shot. When another man came later to the body, it was decided that he would be captured.

Hours after that, the order changed again, shoot everyone on sight who crosses the "imaginary line".

At another time, his unit was positioned near the Shujaiya area of Gaza City. He described Palestinians scavenging scrap metal and solar panels from a building inside the so-called no-go zone.

"For sure, no terrorists there," he said. "Every commander can choose for himself what he does. So it's kind of like the Wild West. So, some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don't face the consequences of that."

The soldier said many of his comrades believed there were no innocents in Gaza, citing the Hamas-led 7 October attack that killed around 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage. Dozens of hostages have since been freed or rescued by Israeli forces, while about 50 remain in captivity, including roughly 30 Israel believes are dead.

He recalled soldiers openly discussing the killings.

"They'd say: 'Yeah, but these people didn't do anything to prevent October 7, and they probably had fun when this was happening to us. So they deserve to die'."

He added: "People don't feel mercy for them."

"I think a lot of them really felt like they were doing something good," he said. "I think the core of it, that in their mind, these people aren't innocent."

In Israel, it is rare for soldiers to publicly criticise the IDF, which is seen as a unifying institution and a rite of passage for Jewish Israelis. Military service shapes identity and social standing, and those who speak out risk being ostracised.

The soldier said he did not want to be identified because he feared being branded a traitor or shunned by his community.

Still, he felt compelled to speak out.

"I kind of feel like I took part in something bad, and I need to counter it with something good that I do, by speaking out, because I am very troubled about what I took and still am taking part of, as a soldier and citizen in this country," he said

"I think the war is... a very bad thing that is happening to us, and to the Palestinians, and I think it needs to be over," he said.

He added: "I think in Israeli community, it's very hard to criticise itself and its army. A lot of people don't understand what they are agreeing to. They think the war needs to happen, and we need to bring the hostages back, but they don't understand the consequences.

"I think a lot of people, if they knew exactly what's happening, it wouldn't go down very well for them, and they wouldn't agree with it. I hope that by speaking of it, it can change how things are being done."

President Donald Trump welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on Monday for the first time since the U.S. and Israel took military action against Iran last month in an effort to dismantle the country’s nuclear capabilities.

The two leaders complimented each other on their alliance in the conflict, with Netanyahu presenting Trump with a letter he said he sent to the Nobel Prize committee, in which he nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, a longtime ambition for the president. Israel would be the second country to nominate Trump for the award.

Trump told reporters that Iran wants to talk with the U.S. and that Washington and Tehran have scheduled talks. He declined to reveal the timeline for those talks, telling reporters, “I’d rather not say, but you’ll be, you’ll be reading about it tomorrow.”

Asked whether regime change should take place in Tehran, Netanyahu said that is “up to the people of Iran.”

While a ceasefire between Israel and Iran continues to hold after last month's 12-day conflict, a similar agreement in Gaza is proving harder to achieve, despite the optimistic tone struck by Trump and Netanyahu in recent days.

Trump said Monday night that there was no "hold-up" in reaching a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. "I think things are going along very well," he said.

Asked about possibility of a two-state solution, Trump yielded the question to Netanyahu, who said Palestinians should have the powers to govern themselves but "none of the powers to threaten us."

"That means that certain powers, like overall security will always remain in our hands. Now, that is a fact, and no one in Israel will agree to anything else, because we don’t commit suicide," Netanyahu said.

Shortly before the White House meeting, Netanyahu met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and separately with Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff. Rubio and Witkoff joined Monday's dinner, along White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.

While Netanyahu traveled to Washington, a separate Israeli negotiating team went to Qatar on Sunday for indirect talks with Hamas. Netanyahu said the Israeli negotiators had clear instructions to achieve a ceasefire agreement under conditions that Israel has accepted.

Inside Gaza, at least 80 people were killed in Israeli strikes, Dr. Marwan Al-Hams, the director of the enclave's field hospitals, told NBC News on Sunday. He added that the number was likely to increase because of the ongoing shelling and airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

More than 56,000 people have been killed and thousands more seriously injured since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, according to health officials in the enclave. About 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage that day in Israel.

Elsewhere, Israel on Sunday launched fresh strikes in areas of Yemen controlled by the Houthi militant group, targeting ports in Hodeida, Ras Isa and Saif, along with the commercial ship Galaxy Leader that they hijacked in 2023.

These ports are used by the Houthi terrorist regime to transfer weapons of the Iranian regime that are used to carry out terrorist plots against the State of Israel and its allies,” an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said in a statement Sunday.

In a separate post on X, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the strikes were part of “Operation Black Flag,” adding that the Iran-backed militant group would “continue to pay a heavy price for their actions.”

“The fate of Yemen is the same as the fate of Tehran,” he added, referring to the Iranian regime.

But a Houthi spokesperson downplayed the Israeli attack in a statement Monday, saying that the militant group's air defenses had "successfully countered" it by “using locally manufactured surface-to-air missiles.”

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept alive the idea of relocating people from the shattered Gaza Strip on Monday, despite widespread condemnation from close allies, the United Nations and human rights groups, as well as the Palestinians themselves.

Trump said at his meeting Monday with Netanyahu at the White House that there was “great cooperation” from Israel's neighbors to take in Palestinians, while Netanyahu said they were “getting close to finding several countries” willing to do so.

Neither provided details of the idea, which Arab nations such as Jordan and Egypt have rejected and condemned as forced displacement, which is illegal under international law.

Newly released interviews and documentation further bolster evidence that Hamas systematically used sexual violence as a weapon of war during its Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack, according to a report by a group of Israeli gender and legal scholars.

The report unveiled Tuesday, titled "A Quest for Justice," was published by the Dinah Project, a legal research initiative led by Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, women's rights activist and law professor at of Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University; Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, a lawyer and the former chief military prosecutor at the Israel Defense Forces; and Nava Ben-Or, a former judge and deputy attorney general.

Partly funded by the British government and Jewish nonprofit organizations, the report contains previously unheard accounts from 15 returned hostages from Gaza, along with testimony from a rape survivor from the Nova music festival, one of at least six different locations where Hamas carried out its attacks.

It also includes eyewitness testimony from at least 17 different incidents of sexual assault, as well as accounts from first responders, forensic evidence, and audio and visual documentation.

The issue of sexual assault and rape during the Oct. 7 attacks is highly emotive and charged, with some in Israel accusing United Nations observers of betraying survivors by downplaying the issue. Meanwhile, some international observers, including a United Nations official appointed to investigate, say that while there is evidence of cases of rape and sexual assault, this evidence does not point to those incidents having been systematic or directed by militant leaders.

Hamas has denied that its militants committed sexual crimes on Oct. 7, 2023.

The report states that clear patterns emerged of sexual violence being perpetrated, including victims who were found “partially or fully naked with their hands tied, often to structures like trees or poles; evidence of gang rapes followed by execution; genital mutilation; and public humiliation.” The details add to and corroborate past reporting on sexual violence that took place during the attacks.

The sexual violence "continued in captivity, with many returnees reporting forced nudity, physical and verbal sexual harassment, sexual assaults and threats of forced marriage,” the report adds.

The victims also include two returned male hostages who were released in January and February after being held captive for about 500 days, where they were subjected to "sexual humiliation, which included forced nudity and physical abuse when naked," according to the report.

In light of the testimonies, the report aims to have the sexual violence acknowledged as crimes against humanity and to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Notably, it calls on the U.N. to send a fact-finding mission and blacklist Hamas as a group. “We hence call upon the U.N. Secretary-General to blacklist Hamas as an organization responsible for the tactical use of sexual violence as a weapon of war,” it states.

Reem Alsalem, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said in a statement that she and fellow rapporteurs and experts emphasized that reports of such violence needed to be independently verified and investigated and perpetrators be held accountable.

She added that the U.N. special commission appointed to investigate "found patterns indicative of sexual violence against Israeli women at different locations. The Commission was also unable to independently verify specific allegations of sexual and gender-based violence due to Israel’s obstruction of its investigations."

"It is my understanding that neither the Commission nor any other independent human rights mechanism established that sexual or gender-based violence was committed against Israelis on or since the 7th of October as a systematic tool of war or as a tool of genocide," Alsalem wrote in the statement.

’You no longer have a government’
Six months into the war in the Gaza Strip, Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing to bring it to a halt. Negotiations were underway for an extended cease-fire with Hamas, and he was ready to agree to a compromise. He had dispatched an envoy to convey Israel’s new position to the Egyptian mediators. Now, at a meeting at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, he needed to get his cabinet onboard. He had kept the plan off the meeting’s written agenda. The idea was to reveal it suddenly, preventing resistant ministers from coordinating their response.

It was April 2024, long before Netanyahu mounted his political comeback. The proposal on the table would have paused the Gaza war for at least six weeks. It would have created a window for negotiations with Hamas over a permanent truce. More than 30 hostages captured by Hamas at the start of the war would have been released within weeks. Still more would have been freed if the truce was extended. And the devastation of Gaza, where roughly two million people were trying to survive daily attacks, would have come to a halt.

Ending the war would then have raised the chances of a landmark peace deal with Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s most powerful country. For months, the Saudi leadership had secretly signaled its willingness to accelerate peace talks with Israel — as long as the war in Gaza stopped. The normalization of ties between the Saudi and Israeli governments, an achievement that had eluded every Israeli leader since the state’s founding in 1948, would have secured Israel’s status in the region as well as Netanyahu’s long-term legacy.

But for Netanyahu, a truce also came with personal risk. As prime minister, he led a fragile coalition that depended on the support of far-right ministers who wanted to occupy Gaza, not withdraw from it. They sought a long war that would ultimately enable Israel to re-establish Jewish settlements in Gaza. If a cease-fire came too soon, these ministers might decide to collapse the ruling coalition. That would prompt early elections that polls showed Netanyahu would lose. Out of office, Netanyahu was vulnerable. Since 2020, he had been standing trial for corruption; the charges, which he denied, mostly related to granting favors to businessmen in exchange for gifts and favorable media coverage. Shorn of power, Netanyahu would lose the ability to force out the attorney general who oversaw his prosecution — as indeed his government would later attempt to do.

As the cabinet discussed other matters, an aide hurried into the meeting room with a document summarizing Israel’s new negotiating position, quietly placing it in front of Netanyahu. He gave it one last read, ticking off various points with his pen. The route to a truce presented real danger, but he seemed ready to move ahead.

Then Bezalel Smotrich, his finance minister, interrupted the proceedings. As a young activist in 2005, Smotrich was detained for weeks — though never charged — on suspicion of plotting to blow up vehicles on a major highway in order to slow the dismantling of Israeli settlements in Gaza. Along with Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national-security minister, Smotrich was now one of the strongest advocates in the cabinet for re-establishing those settlements. He had recently called for most of Gaza’s Palestinian population to leave. Now, at the cabinet meeting, Smotrich declared that he had heard rumors of a plan for a deal. The details disturbed him. “I want you to know that if a surrender agreement like this is brought forward, you no longer have a government,” Smotrich said. “The government is finished.”

It was 5:44 p.m., according to minutes of the meeting. At that moment, the prime minister was forced to choose between the chance of a truce and his political survival — and Netanyahu opted for survival. There was no cease-fire plan, he promised Smotrich. “No, no, there’s no such thing,” he said. And as the cabinet discussion moved on, Netanyahu quietly leaned over to his security advisers and whispered what must have by then become obvious to them: “Don’t present the plan.”

‘A political resurrection’
The 12-day war with Iran in June has been widely understood as a moment of glory for Netanyahu, one that marks the culmination of a hard-fought comeback from the lowest point in his long political career, when he oversaw, in October 2023, the deadliest military failure in Israel’s history.

But in the aftermath of this apparent triumph, a more fateful reckoning awaits Netanyahu over the war in Gaza. The conflict has flattened much of the territory, killing at least 55,000 people, including Hamas combatants but also many civilians, nearly 10,000 of them children under the age of 11. Even if negotiations finally bring Israel’s strikes to a halt in the coming days, it is already the longest high-intensity war in Israel’s history — longer than the wars surrounding its establishment in 1948, longer than the Yom Kippur War that defended its borders in 1973 and far longer, of course, than the six-day Arab-Israeli war of 1967 that brought Gaza and the West Bank under its control.

As the war has dragged on, the global sympathy that Israel earned in the aftermath of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust has instead transformed into growing ignominy on the international stage. The International Court of Justice is weighing claims that Israel has committed a genocide. In America, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s failure to end the war split the Democratic Party and helped spur the upheaval that returned President Trump to power. And in Israel, prolonged war has heightened bitter disagreements about the nation’s priorities, the nature of its democracy and Netanyahu’s legitimacy as a leader.

, after nearly two years, has the war yet to reach a definitive conclusion? Why did Israel frequently turn away chances for de-escalation, instead expanding its military ambitions to Lebanon, to Syria and now to Iran? Why has the war dragged on, even as the leadership of Hamas was decapitated and more Israelis called for a cease-fire? For many Israelis, the war’s protraction is mainly the fault of Hamas, which has refused to surrender despite Palestinians’ suffering unfathomable losses. Most Israelis also see the war’s expansion to Lebanon and Iran as an essential act of self-defense against allies of Hamas that also seek Israel’s destruction. But many increasingly believe that Israel could have struck an earlier deal to end the war, and they charge Netanyahu — who wields ultimate authority over Israel’s military strategy — with preventing that deal from being reached.

To understand the role that Netanyahu’s own calculations played in prolonging the war, we spoke with more than 110 officials in Israel, the United States and the Arab world. These officials — both supporters and critics — have all met, observed or worked with the prime minister since the start of the war and sometimes long before it began. We also reviewed scores of documents, including records of government meetings, communications among officials, negotiation records, war plans, intelligence assessments, secret Hamas protocols and court documents.

For obvious reasons, one of the most sensitive accusations about Netanyahu’s conduct of the war is that he prolonged it for his own personal political benefit. Whether or not they thought he had, everyone we spoke to agreed on one thing: The war’s extension and expansion has been good for Netanyahu. When the war began on Oct. 7, 2023 — the day that Hamas and its allies killed roughly 1,200 people, both civilians and security personnel, and abducted some 250 — it seemed set to end Netanyahu’s political career. The general expectation was the war would subside early in 2024, Netanyahu’s coalition would collapse and Netanyahu would soon be held accountable for the disaster.

Instead, Netanyahu harnessed the war to improve his political fortunes, at first simply to survive and then to triumph on his own terms. Nearly two years after the catastrophic attack on Israel, and still facing serious charges of corruption, he has a good chance of governing Israel until a general election scheduled to occur by October 2026, when he will be 77 — and he could well win it

It is of course impossible to say that Netanyahu made key wartime decisions entirely in the service of his own political survival. His personal quest for power is often inextricably enmeshed with genuine patriotism and the belief, which infuses his public pronouncements, that he alone knows how best to defend Israel. Beyond his own motives, war is a complex, chaotic process with many daily variables that take a course of their own. Like all Israeli prime ministers, Netanyahu lacks full executive control over a sprawling administration full of competing factions and interests. His enemies in Lebanon and Iran posed genuine threats to Israel, and their defeat has strengthened Israeli security. And his adversary in Gaza, Hamas, has blocked or slow-walked cease-fire negotiations during key stretches of the war, including at a point early last summer when Netanyahu appeared more willing to reach a truce.

Yet for all these caveats, our reporting has led us to three unavoidable conclusions. In the years preceding the war, Netanyahu’s approach to Hamas helped to strengthen the group, giving it space to secretly prepare for war. In the months before that war, Netanyahu’s push to undermine Israel’s judiciary widened already-deep rifts within Israeli society and weakened its military, making Israel appear vulnerable and encouraging Hamas to ready its attack. And once the war began, Netanyahu’s decisions were at times colored predominantly by political and personal need instead of only military or national necessity.

Through his office, Netanyahu declined several requests for interviews and did not respond to a detailed list of the findings in this article.

We found that at key stages in the war, Netanyahu’s decisions extended the fighting in Gaza longer than even Israel’s senior military leadership deemed necessary. This was partly a result of Netanyahu’s refusal — years before Oct. 7 — to resign when charged with corruption, a decision that lost him the support of Israel’s moderates and even parts of the Israeli right. In the years since his trial, still ongoing, began in 2020, he instead built a fragile majority in Israel’s Parliament by forging alliances with far-right parties. It kept him in power, but it tied his fate to their extremist positions, both before the war and after it began.

Under political pressure from those coalition allies, Netanyahu slowed down cease-fire negotiations at crucial moments, missing windows in which Hamas was less opposed to a deal. He avoided planning for a postwar power transition, making it harder to direct the war toward an endgame. He pressed ahead with the war in April and July 2024, even as top generals told him that there was no further military advantage to continuing. When momentum toward a cease-fire seemed to grow, Netanyahu ascribed sudden significance to military objectives that he previously seemed less interested in pursuing, such as the capture of the southern city Rafah and later the occupation of the Gaza-Egypt border. And when an extended cease-fire was finally forged in January, he broke the truce in March in part to keep his coalition intact.

The cost of delay has been high: With each passing week, the delay has meant death to hundreds of Palestinians and horror to thousands more. It also meant that at least eight more hostages died in captivity, deepening the divisions in Israel between those who sought a hostage-release deal above all else and those who thought the war should run until Hamas was destroyed. It delayed the Saudi deal and sullied Israel’s image abroad. And it led prosecutors at the International Criminal Court to call for Netanyahu’s arrest.

But for Netanyahu, the immediate rewards have been rich. He has amassed more control over the Israeli state than at any other point in his 18-year tenure as prime minister. He has successfully prevented a state inquiry that would investigate his own culpability, saying that the fallout must wait until the Gaza war ends, even as the defense minister, army chief, domestic spymaster and several top generals all either have been fired or have resigned. As he attends court up to three times a week for his corruption trial, his government is now moving to fire the attorney general who oversees that prosecution. The war’s continuation has also shored up his coalition. It gave him time to plan and enact his attack on Iran. Above all, as even his strongest supporters note, it kept him in office. “Netanyahu pulled off a political resurrection that no one — not even his closest allies — thought possible,” said Srulik Einhorn, a political strategist who is part of Netanyahu’s inner circle. “His leadership through a prolonged war with Hamas and a bold strike on Iran has reshaped the political map. He’s now in a strong position to win elections again.”

This is the inside story, containing many details that have never been previously reported, of Netanyahu’s role in the events that led to the Oct. 7 attacks and of the way that his political calculations affected the conduct of the war that followed. It reveals how — in cabinet meetings, closed-door sessions with his top advisers and phone calls with international allies — Netanyahu made a series of decisions that prolonged a cataclysmic war in part to keep himself in power.